`cabal init` should mostly (only?) use defaults instead of asking.

[AndreasPK]

For my whole Cabal life I've been asked to select options I don't care about. Hundreds of times really if not into the thousands by now.

I've developed an adverse feeling about cabal init to the point where I wonder "Is it worth being interrogated like this? Should I maybe just copy an existing .cabal file and manually update every single field instead?"

Therefore I request humbly: cabal init should mostly go with defaults and ask less questions.

I think there are two kinds of things cabal init asks about:

• Things cabal check should ask if not specified that can be there as a comment.
• Things I will never care much about and if I do I will just edit the .cabal file.

To go through them:

• Cabal specification? I never cared just give me the newest. If I care about backwards compatibility I will set it as old as I can manually.
• Package version? 0.1.0.0 is fine. If I'm going to release it I will change it manually anyway.
• License? I'm not a lawyer. People who don't care are probably just hitting enter. People who do probably use GPL* so maybe okay with a default.
• Author Name? Should be in cabal check probably.
• Email/Homepage? If the project is good enough to deserve one surely you can afford to manually enter it in the .cabal file.
• Category? Just remind me when I do cabal check.
• Synopsis? We have types for that. (Actualy: Remind me during cabal check)
• Main module? Literate programming isn't due a resurgence for another 10 years. Just use Main.hs
• source folder? If I care it won't be one of the suggestions anyway so just pick one for me.
• Language? Maybe worth chosing, but default could be GHC2021 by now.

For any reasonably complex project I will be editing the .cabal file anyway. So I don't care that much about the actual choice cabal init makes. I just use it so I don't have to remind myself if it was ghc-options or options-ghc again.

I'm not sure what others feeling about this are. But today I had to do cabal init twice in a row and I finally got annoyed enough to try and enact change.

[ffaf1]

Some overlap with #11231

[ulysses4ever]

@AndreasPK are you aware of cabal init -n (the non-interactive mode)? I use it all the time. I'd also be happy to have it as the default but I think people flipped the default a couple of times in the previous years (before my time here), and someone has to build an argument explaining why the reasons for the current default do not apply anymore (or why they are ill-advised).

[AndreasPK]

@AndreasPK are you aware of cabal init -n (the non-interactive mode)? I use it all the time. I'd also be happy to have it as the default but I think people flipped the default a couple of times in the previous years (before my time here), and someone has to build an argument explaining why the reasons for the current default do not apply anymore (or why they are ill-advised).

No I never came across that flag before this discussion. Is there a ticket where reasons were discussed?

[ulysses4ever]

Unfortunately, I can't say from the top of my head, so it needs to be researched. It's okay if you want to reframe this ticket as an RFC for flipping the default again without doing the research. We can probably add it to the next Cabal meeting's agenda and try to do it ourselves. It will have some probability of succeeding, but less likely than if we had someone outside having done the research.

[AndreasPK]

I looked a bit in the issues but couldn't find anything. Only some discussion related to how to document it but not the change itself. Maybe I will try my luck with git blame later

[ulysses4ever]

The commit that flipped the switch the last time seems to be this: 1068755 neither the commit message nor the PR (#7344) explain why, it seems... I'd try to ask around a bit (@fgaz @ffaf1 @emilypi @Kleidukos @Mikolaj ) and if nothing comes up, we could try to flip again I think.

Ideally, on just cabal init (no flags) cabal could ask the user whether they are okay with trying the defaults (and proceed with non-interactive in that case) or not.

[emilypi]

So, not to disagree, but the fundamental issue here @AndreasPK is that you know what you're doing, while others don't. How do we best present a cabal project to devs, and who should we optimize for?

I'd argue that because you can set your defaults in ways that beginners can't, we should optimize for people that can't help themselves. If we optimize for people can't help themselves, then we need to figure out how to best get them set up with a project. Some build tools will say "more information is better" like Cabal, others will say "no, we should just get them set up with defaults". Either position is a subjective value judgement. There's no right answer here. If people say it's an issue, then it's an issue, and if they don't, i think the silence is tacit endorsement in that sense.

When i wrote the Omnibus, there was alot of discussion surrounding whether --simple should be the default, and we decided as a team to accept the bias towards beginners and give them information (i.e. the interactive approach) so that when people came up to competency, one could simply issue --simple or -n with some settings toggled once they were more familiar with the system, which is the default suggested behavior. However, I don't know if that's still true - it was a concession we decided upon that should be revisited as often as possible to see if it's still valid. The problem is how to tell if it's still valid! I'm not sure.

Though, looking at the init code, it's not super bitrotten, but it does need some updates, so if anyone wants to pick up the slack there, I'd appreciate it. I'm not much of a developer these days, so i'm happy to shepherd, but i probably won't be fixing it up myself.

[ulysses4ever]

One relevant thread is this: #5902 @gbaz)

I sympathize both sides of the debate and claim that cabal init (no flags) should ask upfront whether you want the defaults or not. That would resolve the tension I think. The new question can have multiple choices, equivalent to -i, -n, -nm, and maybe something else (e.g. I never understood the "simple" mode and instead use -nm, which is close to simple I think). These options in the UI can explicitly mention the flags that you can use to avoid answering this question in the future.

[geekosaur]

@Kleidukos has been doing some updates; check the open PRs.

I just found out from Matrix that there's a config file option to default cabal init non-interactive. This needs to be advertised better.